Posted
by
timothy
on Tuesday May 20, 2014 @11:20AM
from the everybody's-got-priorities dept.

itwbennett (1594911) writes "Last week, China's Central Government Procurement Center posted a notice on new requirements for government tender, that included, among other things, the mysterious request that Windows 8 be excluded from the bidding process on computer purchases. The agency could not be reached Tuesday, but China's state-controlled Xinhua News Agency said that the government was forbidding the use of Windows 8 after Microsoft recently ended official support for Windows XP."

seems like the rest of the entire world would ban everything that comes from the USA, or even just passed through the USA, things like routers, computers & software, TVs, Stereos, portable radios, cellphones, anything electronic, the NSA's spying methods have basically gutted any confidence & trust the rest of the world would have in the USA

That "'sketchy definition of "national sovereignty' when it isn't their own," is so unlike the other Five Eyes, the EU, Russia, BRICS, and, oh, say, China. Might I point out that we're all in one big round (or slightly oval) glass house, eh?

It's already happening. I think that it was Cisco that just made the economic case (10-25% drops in sales, depending on the country) due the NSA's corrupting the company's products in transit. Because when the NSA's behavior drive the whole planet to buy someone else's products, that's bad for business.

Why should the US give a single shit about any other country? It's not like any of them are doing anything besides bitching and moaning about how the evil US has ruined the world. The hatred hurled at the US over the past decade has eroded any chance of the average American really caring about what foreigners think.

Yet there was a time in that distant past before the 1990s when most of the free world, and even many outside it, looked up to the USA as the defender of great values such as freedom.

And the "Colonies" exploited cheap and plentiful waterways, tons and tons of fossil fuel, and technology to create the Industrial Revolution in the US, thus releasing our dependence on expensive English and other "foreign" textiles and machinery.

China has learned what John Cabot and Samuel Slater learned - that innovation goes to where the production is. Where production goes, the scientific and engineering talent will follow. We, bucko, have la

In the 80s, Deng Xiaoping finally got people to listen to the fact that science & technology isn't just a "western" idea - that it's decidedly Chinese - and that it was time that the Chinese were no longer dependent on western interests.

The red-tinted glasses...

What, apart from the maoist revision of Soviet Thought and its current national-corporatist followup (another foreign revision), is inherently Chinese? Even their nationalism and even ethnic supremacism harks back to the worst of western ideas.

The point that sailed clear over your head is that the Chinese are willing to put the effort into bringing the nation into the 21'st century, while we here in the west have some sort of fantasy that we'll somehow profit off of *their* efforts without having to do any of our own.

It's an entitlement mentality here in the West, one fostered by the so-called "investment" community that has laid waste to our own riches by selling our assets overseas for cheap and taking the cut off the top for the transactions.

The Chinese are willing to do anything that makes the Party leaders rich. This can be said about a lot of the ruling classes across the world but the Chinese do not even bother hiding their motives and any of their citizens who voice a complaint are quickly silenced. China does not honor any UN economic sanctions when it comes to doing business with some of the most despotic countries on the planet starting with NK. They will do business with anyone and practice capitalism with gusto. They simply do not car

China has a state sponsored Linux distribution, plus at least one other distribution being developed in China, why do you think people MUST use MS_Windows, i have not had windows on a PC in over 10 years and i am doing fine without it

China has a state sponsored Linux distribution, plus at least one other distribution being developed in China, why do you think people MUST use MS_Windows, i have not had windows on a PC in over 10 years and i am doing fine without it

If you're referring to Red Flag Linux, it's dead - just search 'Red Flag Linux' on/. and you'll find the story in February that describes the company being shut down

I think it's not funny any more. Windows 8 and later do not seem to be operating systems at all, that description seems to have stopped with XP. An OS manages the hardware resources and provides an operating environment for application software to run.

Windows 8 has made it very cumbersome to use the hardware, focusing largely on touch, which is wasted on a desktop. And many legacy application software simply refuse to run on Windows 8 or later. Even simple web based applications are a pain to navigate and use in Windows 8.

So China or elsewhere, people need a decent desktop operating system, and Microsoft seems to have exited that business.

Microsoft was still selling XP until October 2010 and ending support less than 4 years later so this is about par for an average OS.However, XP is far from average and still runs on about half of the computers in China, most ATMs worldwide and, of course, most developing country computers, granny computers as well as on many corporate computers which are in the dinosaur category.Everyone knows they need to get rid of XP but "change is hard".China seems concerned about loss of support for XP (i.e. can't rely on Microsoft) and US spying in Win 8 (can't rely on Microsoft).They would be better off going with their own home grown Linux distro but "change is hard" and they have an incredible installed base problem.

It is disingenuous to count XP's support period from its first release date, considering that each Service Pack represented as big a change to the OS as each Ubuntu release (for example).

Support for original XP (without a Service Pack) ended in 2005- only 4 years supported. The last Service Pack, SP3, was released in 2008- giving it a respectable 6 years supported. If XP had exited support when it was scheduled to (2012- it was only extended due to a Microsoft product-line-up cockup at the hight of the netbook craze), it would have had 4 years in support too- less than any of the others you named.

Even if you stubbornly disagree with what I'm saying about SPs and wish to count it all the way from SP0-SP3 end of support, might I also reiterate above that support was only extended at the last minute due to a Microsoft cockup- namely, that Vista was wildly unsuited to the then very popular netbooks. The standard offer from Microsoft is 10 years support (which is what you might reasonably expect to receive from Windows 8). This is the same as Red Hat, and comparable with other Enterprise-market OSs.

It is disingenuous to count XP's support period from its first release date...Support for original XP (without a Service Pack) ended in 2005- only 4 years supported. The last Service Pack, SP3, was released in 2008- giving it a respectable 6 years supported.

That sounds about right. I refused to upgrade from Windows 2000 until XP had made it past SP1, because XP had so many problems on release. These days, we think of patches to fix security issues. But with XP, most patches just fixed things that were plain broken. The years before SP2, and probably SP3, really shouldn't count in XP's lifespan.

Remember also that five years ago you could buy a brand new computer running XP. So 5 years support only (and substandard support too, as soon as they had a new version they treated the old one like a pariah almost instantly).

SP2 was the last fundamental change to XP's architecture (to the point that some programs that ran on SP1 *stopped working* with SP2). It added Data Execution Prevention and some other under the hood goodies. SP3 was basically a security update rollup with some essential hotfixes thrown in for good measure. Nothing major changed architecturally.

I just wish they would have released one final update rollup with all supported public updates to make it easier to get people up to a final patch level. Having

I've submitted this story as well [slashdot.org], even before the OP (not that I'm bitter....), and with additional information regarding China's plans:

Apart from purchase restrictions for central government offices, China will focus on the development of its own OS based on Linux, a move which An Yang, a security expert with Qihoo 360 Technology, said was a necessity although progress has been disappointing. There are several Linux-based OS developed by Chinese companies, such as KylinOS and StartOS, but they have not pr

Maybe the Chinese government didn't get access to the W8 source code (unlike with XP), or maybe they got some access, but where unable to produce out of those sources a 1:1 identical binary to the released W8 version.

With all the NSA spying going on worldwide, it's prudent for the chinese administration to steer clear of Windows 8 at the moment.

Just as the NSA paid to put a backdoor in RSA crypto. I wouldn't be surprised that NSA was paying businesses to put backdoors in their systems. Is money, coercion or an incentive?

Microsoft would need considerable *more* money than RSA to make it worth their while. Microsoft could buy RSA with the spare change they waste on stupid hardware and software projects that they later abandon. Iâ(TM)m suggesting that the NSA canâ(TM)t afford Microsoft, so they would need some other leverage.

Honestly, I feel that many of the news services that have reported this story got the motive all wrong. I think that the Chinese government not wanting to adopt Windows 8 has much more to do with a convoluted interface and inflated licensing fee than spite over the Windows XP support debacle. Of course this is just my opinion, but from what I hear in the workplace every day in regards to Windows 8, there is a very similar narrative going on here at home.

More likely it's just recognized that 8 is a shitty OS, that deviates too far from windows xp / windows 7, and that the next iteration of windows will wind up veering away from 8.

China likely has a huge number of government users and they don't want to pay for training them to use 8, then having to pay to retrain once 8 is dropped in favor of 9, or whatever alternative is chosen.

So having millions of machines running unpatched XP, and then telling the Americans to go fuck themselves by banned a supported OS... isn't that a bit like cutting off your nose to spite your face?

It's a communist plot. China asked Mr. Softie to please support WinXP past April 8 because it runs on 70% of the PCs over there, and Mr. Softie said no, so this just retaliation, like when China cut off oil to the Norks for a few months for lighting off a nuke. But it's not really going to hurt Mr, Softie ver

Right! Cisco's gear likely has value-added NSA backdoors inside. That makes it a lot more desirable to buy than Huawei's likely built-in chinese backdoors. We should definitely buy more of our surveillance gear than their's.

Pretty sure most governments already decided on Windows 7 anyway when XP starting coming to a close. This seems less a reaction than just a prudent large IT procurement decision. Pretty sure if I was in charge of the decision and someone thought that adding Windows 8 into the mix was a good idea, i'd tell them to go to hell also.

China began their impressive hosting of the Olympic games on 08-08-08 just to illustrate how strong the sentiment.

Perhaps its just a little nauseating to the Chinese culture that they "Kentucky Fry" their national good fortune with yet another mediocre iteration of oppressive corporate software that aims to dominate the market, serve self interest at the expense of the customer, to be the remaining choice available.

Furthermore, the Chinese are pragmatic, and in light of the fact that Microsoft, quite

No, this is proof of the recent industrial espionage allegations against China; they've obviously seen the source code for Windows 8, and they know they don't want it.

Actually Microsoft gives governments (No espionage needed) access to the windows and office source code including the US, Russia, China and other big licenser's. My guess is in this case it backfired and they found shit in it they don't want to touch with a ten foot pole. Possibly another _NSAKEY check?

Yes, they give access to source code, but no instructions on how to build a binary that's 1:1 identical to the released version. This source code, for what it's worth, isn't proof that the release version is spyware-free.

They are obviously heading for open source instead of being locked in to Microsoft.

You would be surprised at how little Linux is used in China. A few years ago, I went to a Linux User Group meeting in Shanghai. Nearly everyone there was either an expat or a haigui, and most of the meeting was conducted in English. When I bought a computer at a local shop, and asked them to install Linux instead of the normal pirated copy of XP, the shopkeeper told me no one had ever requested that before. I have never understood why the Chinese government doesn't promote Linux, rather than relying on

They did for a while, with Red Flag Linux. I thought that was going to be huge. But for some reason its dead now. No idea why. It seems like they could have spared a little bit of money on supporting that on a larger scale than they did. Short sided, IMHO.

When everyone runs Windows OS and Apps for free, what incentive is there to run Linux? That's the down-side of widespread piracy of closed-source software - it is proprietary so it can't be improved by anyone else, and since it's (effectively) free, that wipes out the incentive to make a better competitor, because there's no business return on the (massive) investment and effort to migrate off of Windows.

Open source should naturally appeal to them, since they are nominally commies anyway.

When it comes to commodities they're not even remotely communist anymore, they literally don't care where you get your groceries and clothes and household items, unless those businesses or their owners try to have a political agenda. There's plenty of private enterprises and they don't care if the maker of the toothpaste factory cashes in big and the workers don't. What they do care about is control of public information, strategic industries and technology, infrastructure, natural resources and of course their own hierarchy and when that is at stake they will steamroll the individuals but my impression is that for most of the people most of the time it doesn't affect them very directly. The way most people don't see revolutionary changes if the US goes from Democrats to Republicans and back, the talk changes but daily life goes on.

Even if they could review the source, there's no assurance that the binaries provided actually come from said sources. Further, there's no assurance that the "NSA bullshit" is in any way obvious. It could be as simple as an exploitable memory leak which can be tripped in certain, very rare conditions that would have no indication at all of being exploitable or "NSA bullshit".

My guess is that China wants to start pushing their "Red Flag Linux [wikipedia.org] so that they can at least have a chance at knowing when their secu

My guess is that China wants to start pushing their "Red Flag Linux [wikipedia.org] so that they can at least have a chance at knowing when their security is compromised.

We had a story about this some time ago - about Red Flag Software shutting down [slashdot.org]. While China may be doing just pirated XP (which should be easier to pawn) or Android, they're certainly not pushing their own flagship, which at one time was the #2 Linux distro worldwide.

So long as your compiler can compile itself, and so long as you have access to other independent implementations of the same language, you can defeat the Ken Thompson attack with the David A. Wheeler defense [dwheeler.com]. Just bootstrap your compiler with each of the other implementations (compile it with the other compiler, then compile it with the resulting binary), and if there's no attack, the binaries will converge. For example, if you have independent compilers A, B, and C, then C compiled with (C compiled with A)

Except that since recently you need a C++ compiler to build gcc, which puts a severe block towards reproducibility: you can write a basic C compiler that can handle most programs in a week (with a plain libc, at least), and get all bits needed to let old gcc bootstrap in not much longer. A basic C++ compiler, on the other hand, is a matter of years.

If you're passing the same source files and the same flags to the same compiler and not getting the same result, then either A. your linker is leaking timestamps, or B. you've got RAM issues (as K. S. Kyosuke suggested), or C. you're compromised.

Doesn't alleviate the headache of fully checking your compiler's source code to make sure it doesn't do anything nefarious in select circumstances.

If you search the comments in the source code for the text "nefarious" or "evil" you probably won't catch it. But if you can spot an obfuscated system call handing out permissions like candy then you might have better luck.

Even funnier is their behaviorr in the South China Sea. Totally unreasonable, bullying behaviour, but if you want to see somebody go off their brains, trying pointing out to China they're objectively behaving like bullies and that they have no right to seize territory that isn't theirs...

Everyone in their local neighbourhood thinks they're cunts, but in the eyes of the Chinese themselves, they can do no wrong, and it's everyone else's fault.